According to Webster’s dictionary:

Muse:
Verb
1. To think deeply and at length about:
I mused unhappily over your comment and decided to respond.
Amuse:
1. To occupy in an agreeable, pleasing, or entertaining fashion.
2. To cause to laugh or smile by giving pleasure: Your comment amused me.

Your brain must be engaged and musing to find something amusing!

Seeing Jumpstart.com is very encouraging as my students’ parents are constantly asking for more educational content for their kids to play when they can’t be outdoors running around, or if parents want to supplement learning at home.

I have always been impressed by JumpStart products throughout they years, and now they’ve taken their great ed content to a whole new level.

Great things are happening online in safe environments for kids to explore, and it’s nice to see a reputable company like JumpStart (Knowledge Adventure) continuing to take the lead.

Muse – to think. Amuse – to stop thinking.

That being said, I have never seen any media more educationally comprehensive and engaging than JumpStart. I discovered the products late this summer and my students and I have been passionately preoccupied with it ever since!

Kids love exploration. Exploration leads to understanding which ultimately fosters learning. The JumpStart virtual world products are all about exploring. Kids also love the freedom of choice. Choice creates motivation. Motivation transfers to engagement and self-induced learning. When you have a child who yearns to learn, your job (as a teacher or a parents) becomes simple.

Kids want to have fun, be entertained, compete, and be rewarded. They embrace challenges when they have confidence in their skills. JumpStart allows kids to gain confidence as they master skills.

My students love technology and are innately ‘wired’ to figure things out through exploration. An engaging virtual world like JumpStart allows them to use their sense of exploration to understand and to learn. The entire world is an entertaining, engaging, motivating learning experience that ultimately teaches them to uncover answers and knowledge for themselves (a teacher’s dream).

The best and more effective learning occurs when kids don’t even know they’re doing it. This means that when a child is playing in a virtual world, they should be drowning in opportunities for learning like they are when they play JumpStart. Without even realizing it, a child will explore, discover, and begin to make connections with prior knowledge, creating new knowledge. Teachers will be pleased. Parents will be pleased. Kids will be entertained, engaged, and learning without even knowing it. The more choice and options available to kids, the more motivating and engaging it’s going to be. JumpStart has this down perfectly!

Way to go JumpStart for transforming my classroom! It’s now a place of motivated and engaged learners who are confident in their abilities and constantly yearning to learn more!

I’d be interested to learn more about the didactic aspect of the virtual world. Too many educational companies out there are more concerned with figuring out how to engage than how to actually teach. Let’s face it; kids are smart. They can tell pretty quickly when a game is getting too brain-intensive. The problem with that is kids don’t want to mix times that are for leisure and times that are for serious learning. Figuring out how to both engage and truly teach is the holy grail of education.

Anyway, this is a step in the right direction, but I’m not convinced this is anywhere close to the best solution.